Other Mommy

Sometimes the scariest thing isn't the monster in the house, but the moment a child realizes the world isn't as safe as they thought. Released in 2026 and directed by Rob Savage, Other Mommy is a screen adaptation of Josh Malerman's novel Incidents Around the House, featuring a cast led by Jessica Chastain, Jay Duplass, Arabella Olivia Clark, Karen Allen, Arian Moayed, and Dichen Lachman.

The story centers on a young girl, Bela, who sees a presence that looks exactly like her mother, and that entity wants her trust. What follows is a story about fear, innocence, and the cracks forming inside a family long before anything supernatural shows up.

Back Around the House

Having recently read Incidents Around the House (check out Yvonne's book review for a full take), I was already familiar with the story. The book left a strong impression as an enjoyable, creepy novel with a real sense of profound dread running in the background. But the noise around the release definitely shaped my expectations. Reactions have been all over the place, and plenty of people have been loud about hating it.

With that context, I settled in to see for myself, hoping the adaptation would honor the book's emotional core, even if it didn't mirror every beat. Sitting in the theater, I felt none of that dismissive energy in the room, setting the stage for a film that ended up defying that backlash.

A Family Worth Haunting

At its core, Other Mommy is less of a monster movie and more of an allegory for a family coming undone. The story is at its most powerful when it links the entity's escalating aggression to Bela's forced loss of innocence. Her most intense encounters happen right after she's forced to confront the painful reality that her parents are deeply flawed. This isn't just a haunting; it's the emotional trauma of a collapsing home taking on an evil, physical form.

The whole cast sells the domestic drama with real chemistry. You believe them as a family unit, with the father providing a relatable, sympathetic anchor as a man just trying to hold everything together. The young actress playing Bela gives a strong performance, capturing that difficult transition from childhood certainty to a dawning, fearful awareness of the adult problems around her. While Jessica Chastain carries the difficult job of playing two diverging roles well, the real weight of the film rests on this family dynamic.

A Restrained Presence in the Dark

The horror here is also built on atmosphere, not a high body count. The "Other Mommy" entity is deeply unsettling, portrayed with a creepy stillness and uncanny mimicry that slowly unravels into something more desperate. The film holds back on showing too much, using its special effects with restraint, relying more on subtle distortions and shadows. It keeps the story grounded and prevents it from tipping into a CGI spectacle or creature feature.

However, it does lean on its jump scares, maybe a little too heavily for my taste given how strong its quieter moments are. They didn't ruin the movie for me, though, and they don't break the profound tension from the dread of seeing a child caught between a supernatural threat and a fracturing family.

What the Darkness Sounds Like

I was surprised at the minimal presence of music in this film. Long stretches play out in near silence, and that choice allows the tension to really breathe. It also keeps the film from feeling like a standard haunted house movie where the score tells you when to be scared.

The audio during the party scene also stood out to me. The sound mix wrapped around the theater, capturing how disjointed and disorienting it feels for a kid to be dropped into an adult space she's not ready for. That's where the dread lives. Nothing about the production values felt cheap or rushed to me, and it's clear the filmmakers cared about the details.

Not a Faithful Adaptation, but a Good One

The adaptation choices are bold, with many departures from the original story of the novel. However, what the film does instead makes sense for the medium. Josh Malerman is credited as an executive producer, so the changes felt deliberate rather than a studio railroading an author. This was a team deciding to make a better movie rather than a better adaptation, and I think it worked.

Suspension of disbelief holds for most of the runtime. The first time the father sees Other Mommy in the house, he calls the police. The family doesn't stay in the haunted house forever. They escalate, they move, they try to get away. This was one of the core elements of the novel that felt real, and it translated well onto the screen.

The one plausibility snag is the public incidents. In a modern setting where everyone has a phone, things that happen in public would be recorded and shared everywhere. The story would play differently if it were set ten or twenty years earlier, or if the events stayed private the way they mostly do in the novel. The film does a fair job trying to deal with that by just making them look like a family falling apart, but it was definitely a minor plot hole in an otherwise immersive film.

The novel's first-person perspective made this hit harder on the page. You lived inside Bela's head as her innocence eroded. The film can't replicate that intimacy, but it foregrounds the allegory in a way some readers might have missed in the book while still remaining grounded. This isn't Antlers, where the metaphor sits front and center and lectures you. The film keeps its themes woven into the story and lets you find them.

This is character-driven, dread-focused horror. The fear comes from watching a family break apart with a child trapped in the middle. It's "what's going to happen to this poor family." The restraint suits the kind of story it's telling.

Who Should Let Other Mommy In

If you love ghost stories and haunted-family horror that cares about the people on screen, this is worth your time. If you read Incidents Around the House and would enjoy seeing how a different medium handles its premise, you'll find a lot to discuss. If you want character-driven horror and you're willing to think about what the haunting represents, this delivers.

Skip it if you absolutely need a one-to-one adaptation. The retitle from the novel makes sense because the film diverges quite a bit. Viewers who are only seeking constant action, a high body count, or violence and gore will be left wanting, as will anyone who strongly dislikes jump scares.

As for rewatching, I probably wouldn't sit down and pick it for a dedicated rewatch, but I'd leave it on if it came up on cable or play it as a background movie at a Halloween party. On that note, I hope this film finds better footing in replays once it hits streaming services.

Despite the noise surrounding its release, Other Mommy is a well-crafted, above-average haunting that more than earns its place in the house. It's a thoughtful, grounded adaptation that keeps the spirit of its source while reshaping the story to fit the screen.

Don't just listen to the rumors; for the right audience, this is one horror film that's worth letting inside.